Those of you who remember Billie Jean King’s tennis career (or those of you who have watched Break Point on Netflix) might have come across the saying ‘Pressure is a privilege’.
Billie Jean King, a tennis legend, used the phrase to describe her feelings towards playing in front of crowds who expected her to win titles because she was that good, crediting the mindset for being the reason she managed to stay strong despite mountains of pressure.
Inspirational to say the least, but this mindset doesn’t need to be reserved for top-level Grand Slam winning athletes. Pressure can be defined as ‘a sense of stressful urgency caused by having too many demands on one’s time or resources’… Seems overly specific. According to this definition, something is only causing pressure on somebody if that person is overworked or doesn’t have enough time.
How about another definition? Pressure: ‘The influence or effect of someone or something’. Seems vague… according to this, anything can be pressure.
How did Billie Jean King define pressure? King said, ‘Usually, if you have tremendous pressure, it’s because an opportunity comes along’. This is what she means by ‘Pressure is a privilege’. Feeling a sense of pressure, whether from other people or (more importantly) from yourself, means that you are being faced with an opportunity.
Whether it’s some sort of assessment, a deadline, new responsibilities, all these things come with pressure piling on from somewhere. If we feel a strong sense of pressure from ourselves, this doesn’t have to mean that we’re overthinking things or being anxious, this means that we have a deep desire within ourselves to meet or exceed our own expectations.
If others are putting pressure on us to do well and it feels really intense, is this person being unfair? Or does this person just expect a lot from me because I’m very capable? Maybe they expect more from me than I do from myself? If that’s the case, maybe if I expected more from myself, I could meet those lofty expectations.
Learning to accept pressure, wherever it comes from, as an opportunity to meet the expectations set for you can give you a whole new perspective on your challenging times. Rather than seeing pressure as a hinderance to your progress, you see it for what it really is, the opportunity to show the world what you’re really made of.